2015 Book Club

The scholars who portray Chautauqua characters share the prominent books that inform their research. Your book club is invited to select a book(s) that deepens your knowledge of the fascinating personalities who are featured at High Plains Chautauqua each year. These books provide a rich context for individuals who have impacted history and are sure to provoke lively discussion. FOR A PRINTABLE PDF COPY, CLICK HERE.

Egan, Timothy. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America. Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2009. The riveting story of the August 1910 forest fire that raged through Northeast Washington, Northern Idaho, and Northwestern Montana, burning over three million acres and claiming as many as one hundred lives. This is also the story of the founding of the United States Forest Service and the preservation of the great western forests.

Goodwin, Doris. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. Simon & Schuster, 2013. A longer read, Goodwin looks at the complicated friendship of TR and his chosen successor and later opponent through the prism of a new kind of journalism practiced by such journalistic luminaries as S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, William Allen White, and Lincoln Steffens.

McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. Simon & Schuster, 1981. My favorite, because it focuses on the young boy, known to his family affectionately as Tee-dee. It is often said, “The boy is the father to the man.” With magnificent prose, McCullough introduces the reader not only to the sickly boy who would become the famous outdoorsman, but we also learn of his siblings, parents, and grandparents, those loved ones who imprinted themselves on the future president. Readable and half as long as many of the other biographies.

The three works above are tremendously detailed and accurate, dealing, in turn, with TR’s pre-presidential experience, his presidency, and his post presidential years. The first work won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and has long been reported to be a “next project” by director Martin Scorsese and producer/actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Roosevelt, Theodore. Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography. Macmillan, 1913. In the chapter on his early political lessons as a young member of the New York General Assembly and his chapter titled “In Cowboyland,” detailing his years as a cattle rancher, TR is at his best. This book is a gift of wordsmithing and wit by TR.